Stories of family and ancestors who lived and worked in Cohoes (textile and garment workers, butchers and barbers), Waterford (canalers), Whitehall (farmers and canalers), Port Henry (iron miners and Civil War soldiers), Champlain (canalers and farmers) and other towns along the Champlain Canal in New York State with some diversions to the places they emigrated from....Quebec (landless farmers, shoemakers, sailors, soldiers), Acadia (more farmers), and even Cornwall, England (tin miners).

Saturday, November 6, 2010

So far on this blog, I have written stories about family members who succumbed and/or survived thyroid disease and smallpox and I have only touched the surface. Until the advent of the smallpox vaccine, the polio vaccine and the diphtheria vaccine (to name a few) childhood and good health was quite precarious.

Last month I posted a short about Lea St Hilaire who grew up in the orchard section of Cohoes, NY. I wrote that I have a few spoken word stories from Lea. The first one is about "Little Irene" who survived polio in the late 1930s. Only eighteen months old when she was stricken with polio in Hoboken, NJ, she endured. Her left arm never recovered but that never held "Little Irene" back. You can hear Lea speak of Irene's strength and stamina if you click on this audio link Listen Here. Little Irene, herself, cannot remember spending time in an iron lung but she will never deny having polio. Both her legs, both arms were paralyzed so she may have been in an iron lung for a while. Little Irene isn't sure what Lea is referring to in the audio portion when Lea speaks of the 'iron lung in the back of the automobile', perhaps it was the Bradford frame used to splint her arms and legs that was put on Irene for the car ride from her home in New Jersey to Cohoes.

Bradford Frame

Single Child Iron Lung Respirator
Circa 1930s

On the day in September 1944, when Little Irene's grandfather, Louis St. Hilaire, was buried, "Little Irene" was sent to my mother for "safekeeping". "Little Irene" says she never gave her up from that first encounter. Even on the day Dorothy married Art Mylott, Little Irene recalls telling Art "you can marry her, but she's mine"! Irene still calls me "sister".

Little Irene is the small girl standing in front of her brother.
Also in the picture ate
the Chard twins in dark jackets and a cousin, Kathleen.

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“But soon we shall die and all memory of those five will have left the earth, and we ourselves shall be loved for a while and forgotten. But the love will have been enough; all those impulses of love return to the love that made them. Even memory is not necessary for love. There is a land of the living and a land of the dead and the bridge is love, the only survival, the only meaning.”

Wilder, Thornton. The Bridge of San Luis Rey. 1927.

Reading this Blog....

...may not seem particularly easy. I post information and stories in whatever sequence comes to me and sometimes it doesn't make a whole lot of sense. I may post about someone and three weeks later write about them again. In between the two posts, there may be stories about other people or places. That is why there is a search button at the bottom of this page.

Thanks for reading and commenting! Email me at FrancoAmericanGravy@gmail.com